Kwara Coalition of Business and Professional Associations (KWACOBPA) has advocated that adequate attention be accorded economic security for business to thrive.
The coalition, however, called on the state government to address insecurity affecting business communities in the state.
Addressing journalists on the revised Kwara State Business Agenda on the sideline of stakeholders’ meeting in Ilorin, Wednesday, Olalekan Ayodimeji, the chairman of the association, urged the government to look into the deplorable condition of road network and inefficient waste management in the business environment.
According to Ayodimeji, every security matter is local. With such measures as security watch, members of the local vigilance group in every community would know members in their areas and map out measures to prevent outsiders from perpetrating crimes in their own community.
He noted that inadequate security in the business environment was one of the priority issues selected by the coalition and researched by the researcher for the 2016 state business agenda.
Ayodimeji informed that for the update of the 2016 State Business Agenda, the researcher carried out a survey on inadequate security in the business sector and established the following findings.
“Farmers constitute a large percentage of the total population in Kwara State. And we all agree that we need food for our survival, just like we need sustaining and secured environment for business development. We’ve made advocacy visits to the state government, heads of security agencies in the state and we hope that the issue will be addressed.”
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“All recommendations on inadequate security as contained in the 2016 business agenda were not implemented. About 76 percent of the respondents confirmed that the purchase of 25 armoured personnel carriers was not implemented.
About 57 percent of the respondents also believed that recommendations on the purchase of additional 120 patrol vans were not carried out.
“Research survey also confirmed that security situation in the state has not improved as 295 or 54.4 percent of the respondents claimed that security situation has not improved. To further establish the claim the respondents were asked to rate crime as either very high, high low or indifferent, out of 542, 407 or 75 percent of the respondents rated crime situation since 2016 as either very high or high.
” On which of the security challenges has the greatest impact on the business sector, 205 or 37.8 percent of the respondents voted bank robbery while highway robbery with 170 or 31.4 percent was voted second.
” Highway robbery has the highest rate of occurrence especially in the Kwara North according to the respondents. 215 or 40 percent rated highway robbery as having the highest rate of occurrence.
“Research findings also noted a devastating robbery which took place in Offa at which six banks and divisional police headquarters were callously attacked. At the end of the operation, 55 people were gruesomely murdered out of which 9 were police personnel and 2 bankers.
“Research findings also established that these vices are blamed on non-implementation of state business agenda, illiteracy among the youth, unemployment, failure of the state to punish infractions, Nigeria’s porous borders, the poor response by security agents, and failure of parents and religious leaders”.
